The fire hydrant on the northwest corner of Damen and Fulton is “jumpy.” Meaning, in Department of Water Management parlance, that water can be heard vibrating within the cylinder, a tip-off that the neoprene seal inside has decayed and is leaking.
A leaking fire hydrant wastes water, and in winter will freeze, rendering it useless — common enough that on really cold days the Chicago Fire Department routinely sends four engines to a really big fire, setting up north, south, east and west of the scene to make sure they tap enough working hydrants.
The public is generally unaware of the water department’s important role in firefighting — any fire 2-11 or above requires a hydrant truck be dispatched. Their steamers can thaw a hydrant in 10 minutes, and sometimes a main must be shut down so the CFD can remove their hoses, though that can cause another complication — the main must be turned back on. When the old McCormick Place burned down in January 1967, blame fell to the surrounding hydrants, most of which didn’t work. Not due to being frozen, as first believed, but because one valve that was supposed to be open was closed.
So a jumpy hydrant can’t be ignored — it can be the difference between life and death. A week ago Friday, one of the water department’s four hydrant repair trucks was dispatched to fix the hydrant at Fulton and Damen.
Not an easy task.
It would be a lot easier if they shut off the main — but that would also cut water for blocks around, including the Chicago Teachers’ Union headquarters across the street and an array of nearby hip brewpubs. For hours. Work would have to be done at night, which means overtime for a crew of four.
To yank out the seal of a fire hydrant while still under pressure and replace it with a new one requires a large, complicated tool the water department calls a “gun” — a 10 foot tall assemblage of pipe, part tent pole, part giant socket wrench, that easily weighs 200 pounds. It seals off the hydrant so it can be opened while under pressure. Only one company in the world makes them to fit Chicago’s unique style of hydrant, and occasionally a pickup truck arrives to collect a broken gun and take it back to Texas for repairs. Water workers call the process, with an occasional blush, “jerking.”
Dangerous work for them — and passersby
The device takes about an hour to set up by the truck crew — Kevin Franklin, Robert Laws, Dorian Minor and supervisor Charlie Brown, who between them they have well over a century on the job. Three wear bright orange rain pants — hydrants are 2 feet from the curb, and — talk about pressure — vehicles rushing past pose a constant peril to the workers. Pedestrians blithely blundering by put themselves in danger.
“We have to worry about their safety and ours,” Laws said.
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Interesting and informative. Had no idea of the dangers of this type of work and all that is involved.
ReplyDeleteTwo months ago a tech stepped on the service connection pipe causing a leak. Just a trickle but on the wrong side of the shutoff valve resulting in us needing to call the city to shut off the water to the building.
ReplyDelete$50,000.00 later....
Thanks again, Mr. S.
ReplyDeleteI have learned so much from reading your work over the years.
No Baby Richards for you.
While all of them are red now, with that painted band around the flange [most with a painted band have a yellow band] it used to be three different colors for the hydrants.
ReplyDeleteRed was for those on mains under 18' in diameter, yellow was those on mains 16" to 60" in diameter & silver was for those on water tunnels over 60" in diameter.
The last silver one I saw was on Wilson east of Lincoln where there's a water tunnel that connects from the lake to the Mayfair Pumping Station.
Typo, it should be red hydrants are on under 16" diameter water mains.
DeleteFurther on the topic of hydrant colors... we have blue ones visible along the edges of some fields out here in the far northwest 'burbs, such as a pair on the western end of Peterson Road where it meets IL Route 60.
DeleteAs soon as we drove by, my wife was curious enough to Google the question of why they were blue, and the on-line consensus of answers was that Blue indicates a flow rate of 1,500 Gallons per Minute or more, highest or fastest of the color scale. Green indicates 1000 to 1499 GPM, Orange is 500-999 and Red represents Below 500 GPM, your basic neighborhood minimum.
What does yellow hydrant mean?
ReplyDeleteGot it-see above
DeleteToo many dogs . . .
DeleteThe water department certainly is a challenging job in any city.
ReplyDeleteNo one thinks about them until something doesn't work.
I'd hate it. Wet all the time. Muddy, and imagine doing this in the Winter.
Brutal.
The water department certainly is a challenging job in any city.
ReplyDeleteNo one thinks about them until something doesn't work.
I'd hate it. Wet all the time. Muddy, and imagine doing this in the Winter.
Brutal.
Fascinating. Thank you, Neil, for revealing how our taken-for-granted world works.
ReplyDeletejohn
Fascinating. Did you just come across this or is this part of a larger series (I hope)?
ReplyDeleteI've been interested in hydrants for years — some of the notes I used in this story are 20 years old. The fire department would never cooperate, nor would the East Jordan Iron Works, now EJCO, allow me to come watch them being made. The water department angle arose recently, and I figured it was a way in. I've already sent the story to the East Jordan folks, to remind them of my open invitation to myself that I need them to approve. And the CFD said I could go out with a firehouse checking hydrants , though I don't expect that to actually happen, though not for lack of my trying.
DeleteThis is good journalism. But what is a 2/11? Reporters use fire codes all the time (“triple two alarm” etc.). Can’t they just say how many trucks and men are working the fire? That would be more meaningful. They don’t use cop codes. Why use fire codes?
DeleteMore meaningful to whom? You? If you were genuinely curious, you could just plug "what is a 2-11 fire?" into Google, and be told it calls out 4 Engines, 2 Trucks, 1 Tower Ladder, 2 Battalion Chiefs, 1 District Chief, 1 Air. Which is a lot to put down. 2-11 is shorter.
DeleteAnybody who grew up in Chicago, and listened to the radio or watched TV news, knows what a 2-11 fire is. They may not know how many engines, trucks, ladders, or chiefs are called out, but they know that the higher the number, the more serious the fire...3-11, 4-11, 5-11, and so on. Anything bigger than 5-11 gets special alarms in addition to the transmitted code. A 5-11 with two or three specials is a BIG blaze, and a memorable one.
Delete. My most memorable big one was watching the tank farm burn at the Rust-Oleum plant in Evanston in '75, after the explosions and the orange glow woke me up. Luckily for the firefighters, and my fellow bystanders, and me, the big tanks did not go up, or I might have been a goner at 27. Cronkite reported on the fire on that night's CBS News..
very interesting column! There's a hydrant on the parkway in front of our house. I've seen workers flush it. I always thought they were 'just checking' it, but i'll have to pay more attention. Perhaps it was being drained ahead of winter.
ReplyDeleteJill A
Local hydrants are designed to automatically drain, to prevent freezing.
DeleteEpic, and fascinating.
ReplyDeleteGreat column. Have a hydrant in front of my house. Leaked once and I just went by the fire house and told them and they took care of it. This column was well done and very informative. Real gem. Put this in a book with some of these other masterpieces. It would be hard to choose which ones to put in, but this would get my vote. Along with about 100 others.
ReplyDeleteVery astute and informative. I never appreciated all the hard work that goes into keeping Chicago's fire hydrant system running.
ReplyDelete